The removal of dirt and debris from factory floors through the use of various types of factory type floor sweepers has been known for many years. The most common type of conventional self-propelled factory floor sweeper employs a horizontally disposed sweeping broom that sweeps dirt and debris forwardly directly into a hopper. It is well-known that such rotating sweeping brooms cannot clean dust properly from a factory floor, which is highly undesirable in an environmental sense, and also cannot clean dirt and debris from chipped and pocketed areas of a factory floor. Unless a scrubbing operation is performed, or in other words unless water is used, conventional self-propelled factory floor sweepers will leave matter, or other words dust, on the factory floor. However, scrubbing is generally undesirable, since it is time consuming and expensive. Further, hundreds of gallons of polluted water can be generated during the scrubbing of a large factory floor. Such polluted water must be disposed of properly, which is very inconvenient and can be very expensive.
In many jurisdictions, new legislation is presently being considered that reduces the size of the particles that must be contained to two and one half microns. Conventional self-propelled factory floor sweepers cannot effectively clean such small particulate matter unless a scrubbing operation is performed.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a self-propelled factory floor cleaning vehicle that sweeps the floor being cleaned with a sweeping broom first and then cleans small particulate matter from the floor.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a self-propelled factory floor cleaning vehicle that sweeps the floor being cleaned with a sweeping broom first and then cleans small particulate matter from the floor, without the use of water for dust suppression.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a. self-propelled factory floor cleaning vehicle that properly clens cracks and depressions in a factory floor.